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Man convicted in 1996 rape of 13-year-old girl

A man who calls himself Cowboy stood before a Jefferson County jury Friday morning to deliver a rambling plea for his freedom. He detailed a complicated conspiracy, involving corrupt cops and scorned lovers, that led him to be accused of hogtying a teenage girl and raping her repeatedly nearly two decades ago.

Man convicted in 1996 rape of 13-year-old girl

A man who calls himself Cowboy stood before a Jefferson County jury Friday morning to deliver a rambling plea for his freedom. He detailed a complicated conspiracy, involving corrupt police and scorned lovers, that led him to be accused of hogtying a teenage girl and raping her repeatedly nearly two decades ago.

Joseph Wayne Allen made the unusual decision to represent himself at trial this week. He questioned himself on the witness stand, then mumbled answers in reply.

A jury found him guilty of three counts of first-degree rape, kidnapping, sodomy, sexual abuse and tampering with physical evidence, convictions that will likely send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The jury will return to court Monday afternoon to recommend a sentence for Allen, who was acquitted on a charge of burglary.

Prosecutors Diane Arnold and John Balliet said Allen thought he could woo jurors with “country charm.” His crime, they said, was “monstrous.”

The 13-year-girl woke up early one morning in the summer of 1996 to a man wearing a mask.

Her mother had gone to work, and the child was alone.

He tied her ankles and her wrists to the bed and raped her repeatedly. Then he took her to the bathroom, cleaned her and forced the shower head inside of her in an attempt to wash away any DNA, prosecutors said. She testified that was the most excruciating part of the ordeal.

Then he led her back to the bedroom, tied her up again and fled.

Allen had lived with the family off and on in the home. He owned a nearby store, called The Cowboy Way, and still goes by the nickname “Cowboy Allen.”

He came back in the house that morning — this time without the mask — and pretended to discover the girl tied there.

Detective Bill Stanley, who retired from the Louisville Metro Police Department’s Crimes Against Children Unit in 1999, testified that the rapist also tried to stage a burglary.

A window above the kitchen sink was open, and a chair had been placed outside with a muddy footprint on it. But there was no corresponding muddy footprint on the white rug he would have had to step on to climb down from the sink.

Men who rape strangers don’t typically mind if they hurt or humiliate them, Stanley said. But the child told police that her attacker loosened the ropes when she told him they were too tight. He covered her with a blanket when he left.

He concluded that the rapist was a person who knew and liked the child, who didn’t want to hurt her, but plotted to tie her up, terrorize and rape her.

Allen was their immediate suspect. Though semen was found inside the child, DNA technology was minimal at the time. Allen refused a polygraph and stopped cooperating with police, Stanley said.

A few months later, he moved to Florida, and the case went cold. There, he apparently took up with another family.

In May 2002, he sexually abused a girl who was under his care, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. He was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to three decades in prison. His scheduled release date is 2032.

When the child’s mother learned of the Florida investigation, she told the Louisville Metro Police Department and reminded it of her daughter’s attack.

Detective Leigh Maroni reopened the investigation in 2004, tested the DNA and matched it to samples taken from Allen in Florida.

He struggled this week to articulate to the jury an elaborate conspiracy that he said led him to be accused of the rape. He said it involved a former wife afraid he’d take her money in a divorce so she paid a child to claim he’d raped her; another scorned woman, furious when he told her he’d never been in love with her; an affair with a neighbor lady whose husband thus hated him; planted DNA evidence; and generations of nefarious detectives, determined to bring him down to advance their careers.

He asked himself about his dreams and his parents, former wives, his bipolar disorder and an affair he had with a neighbor.

He confessed he’d been a “deadbeat dad” who abandonedhis children. He’s committed adultery. He’s left every woman he’s dated. He’s incapable of love.

But he didn’t rape the child, he maintained.

Arnold cross-examined him, and he confessed that he wasn’t cut out for the practice of law.

“You threw me off my rhythm many times,” he told the prosecutor. “I’ve been surprised. I didn’t know it was this difficult.”

Reporter Claire Galofaro can be reached at (502) 582-7086. Follow her on Twitter at @clairegalofaro.